Ghosts
by DocMarten2525
Summary: Dreaming in the sunshine, an aging Sole Survivor reflects on his past and the people he's known - friends, enemies, lover - and the way the world has changed since the day he left the vault. [WARNING: Contains spoilers for A Beautiful Heart and The Memory Box]


_The old man lowered himself carefully into the chair. Squinting against the late afternoon sunshine, he pulled the writing table toward him. Taking out an old-fashioned ball point pen, he thought for a moment. Then he began to write._

I remember how it used to be. Not many do, these days. But I remember the bad times, when the Institute still ran things from the shadows, when the Commonwealth lived in fear. Back when every block had its gang of raiders and you couldn't whistle past a graveyard without waking up a pack of ferals. Deathclaws! Well, we still have deathclaws, although things are better since we signed the treaty. Who knew they were intelligent? But there was a time when the song of the Commonwealth was the rattle of distant gunfire. That's all changed, now. At long last, peace has come.

I'm old. That makes me an anomaly in the Commonwealth. People rarely grow old here, even now. Too much radiation in the soil, too much accumulated damage built up over the generations since the Great War. My pre-War genes help, of course. Maybe being frozen in a cryotank for 200 years helped, too. But I'm old now even in pre-war terms. And let me tell you, it's not as much fun as you'd think. I shuffle where once I strode. I need glasses for everything and my hands shake so hard I can barely keep a target steady in the cross hairs. It's a good thing my roaming days are over. I still pop off the odd radstag now and then, but they're few and far between around here.

If I've changed, well, the world has changed, too. It's hard to believe this is the same Commonwealth I woke up to all those years ago. It's all farms around Red Rocket these days. There are fields and towns, even a post office. The Glowing Sea still glows, of course, but even there radiation levels are starting to drop. The earth does heal, it turns out. It just takes time.

And me, well, mostly I sit in my chair and dream

They're all gone now. Old friends, old enemies. I close my eyes and there they are, an endless line of ghosts passing by. Kellogg, that poor, muddled, bastard. I hated him for a long time. But he was only what the world made him. Can you blame the rock when it stubs your toe, or the rain for making you wet? Or the man they called "Father"; betrayed by his own vision and dead by my hand, ultimately, although it was only a matter of time before his cancer got him anyway. But I grieve for him, or at least, for who he'd once been. He gave me you, Shaun, and for that I am grateful. So I forgive him, too.

Some were harder than others. Preston Garvey, that constant nag, killed when we finally took Quincy back from the Gunners. Sturges died too, that day; and the Longs, Jun and Marcy. I buried those two myself, next to their son. We planted trees there, because Marcy loved to sleep with the sound of wind in the branches. Strange, the things you learn about people in the restless hours on the eve of battle. Ronnie Shaw, that old harpy, who went quietly in her sleep much to her great surprise I am sure. Deacon, MacReady; Nick Valentine, who walked into a slaver strongpoint with a pair of mininukes under his old trench coat. They drift through my memory: orphaned shadows from a darker time.

That's the hardest part about getting old. Hancock warned me, that old ghoul. "People like me don't make friends with the short-lived," he said. "It hurts too much." Ironically, he was my friend. Even more ironically, he's gone now, too; kicking and clawing to the last, on the barricades the day we held Goodneighbour against the super mutants. Him, old Kent Connolly, that prick who worked the door at the Third Rail whose name I can never remember. A dozen others. Thank God for the Minutemen, who came when they were called. All gone now, but so are the super mutants.

So many ghosts. Nora, my Nora; my first love. I remember that day - the sun on the water as the rock skipped, skipped, and skipped again. Seven times. "A record!" you said. "We'll have to do something special to celebrate." And we did. Then afterwards, in that lazy, drowsy time, I said "I suppose we'll get married now," and you said "I suppose we will." And it was wonderful, for that little time we had together. But somewhere in the years between, I've lost your face. I can remember your dress that day and the way your hair smelled, but not what you looked like.

I always come back to Cait in these moments. Sweet, fragile Cait. I suppose you were never meant to grow old; so broken and brittle, like a china doll that's been dropped so often it's all just cracks and jagged corners. You would have hated the new Commonwealth, anyway. But when you died, I died too, and the world is a colder place without you. I hope in the end you found what you were looking for.

And finally, Piper. It was Piper who came back for me that awful day. Piper, who dragged me out and put all my pieces back together. Piper, with whom I finally grew old. Beautiful, patient Piper; my lifeboat on a stormy sea. And now she's gone, too, holding my hand in the sunshine where we carried her that day when the drugs couldn't stop the pain anymore. If Nora's a faded memory and Cait the twinge of an old wound, Piper is like reaching for something with the arm you've forgotten you no longer have. She loved the sunrise and the sunset and all the moments in between; and the moon riding high over the city, and she smelled like daffodils in the spring.

I'm tired, Shaun. I look for the people I used to know, and they're all gone. All but you – the perpetual 13-year-old, always on the edge of adulthood but never quite there yet, and so busy figuring out new ways to save humanity that even eternity won't be long enough for you. But you don't need me anymore and there's precious little left for an old Wastelander in today's brave new world.

That's something to celebrate. Father was wrong in this, as he was in so many things: we didn't doom humanity when we destroyed the Institute; we set it free, and it has flourished. Although there were things that happened that day I have never forgiven myself for, in the end it was the right decision.

I got chatting with a couple Minutemen the other day. There's been a behemoth spotted up north a piece, wandered down from Canada, they think. It's been years since we've seen one in these parts. I'm thinking I'll dig out old Reba, oil her up and take a walk up that way, see what I can find.

Maybe I'll find Piper up there too, somewhere. It can't hurt to look.

Love always,

Dad


End file.
